{"id":338665,"date":"2025-12-09T09:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338665\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T09:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:06:10","slug":"california-fire-chief-brian-fennessy-to-lead-new-united-states-wildland-fire-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338665\/","title":{"rendered":"California Fire Chief Brian Fennessy to Lead New United States Wildland Fire Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/People-on-the-move-13-300x169.png\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium wp-image-595166\" alt=\"\"   loading=\"eager\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\"\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) Chief Brian Fennessy will retire on January 2, 2026, to become the inaugural Director of the newly established United States Wildland Fire Service (USWFS). <\/p>\n<p>The new federal agency, launching in January 2026, is designed to consolidate and modernize federal wildland firefighting efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Fennessy announced the move in a letter to OCFA personnel, sharing that he will complete a federal onboarding process before stepping into the role. <\/p>\n<p>He highlighted the agency\u2019s national reputation, the strength of OCFA\u2019s mission-driven culture, and the opportunities ahead for improving coordination and safety at a federal scale.<\/p>\n<p>Fennessy\u2019s nearly 50-year career spans the full spectrum of wildland and metropolitan fire service leadership. He started in 1978 with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management as a hotshot and helitack firefighter, eventually serving as a crew superintendent.<\/p>\n<p>Homeland Security Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) Chief Brian Fennessy will retire on January 2, 2026, to become the inaugural&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,170432],"class_list":{"0":"post-338665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa","16":"tag-wildland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}